Bewildering

I tend to think that one of the most hilarious and bizarre afflictions of the twenty-first century is excessive self-imposed blog guilt- that whole “sorry I haven’t posted in forever, I feel terrible, I’m a bad blogger, I hate myself and you all must hate me too” kind of thing when the truth is, realistically, does anyone but me actually care about this blog? It seems unnecessarily self-important to think so, but I’m sorry I irritated that last commenter.

The situation is this- my family has been really ill. There you have it. I don’t want to go into the details, but the fact is, as much as I love the Mariners, there have been things in my life that are more urgent and more upsetting. Which is kind of saying a lot, because WOW are the Mariners upsetting right now. Sadly that’s the way the world works. So, I apologize.

Moving on. Um, what the heck is going on with this team? We are awful. I mean, we are awful. I don’t even know how else to say it. This season is just hurtful. I am sickened and confused. What has happened to our offense? And come to think of it, what has happened to our defense? Where are we going? How can we be this far back already, when this first part of the season was going to be our chance to shine? I’m bewildered.

Nobody is even going to Safeco to watch these guys. I’m ashamed to admit this, but even I have let getting tickets to a game slide down my priority list for the summer. I can’t help but feel like there’s this overwhelming sense that this team is never going to be any good. I’m not saying that’s how I personally feel… I’m just saying that I think the general public is no longer optimistic, or even paying attention. Reading some of the comments over on John Hickey’s blog, the general feeling is that this team was way overhyped. I agree, and I think that makes the sting of our miserable performance that much worse.

As painful as it is for us the fans, it’s got to be a billion times worse for the players. They’re sitting on the worst record in the AL, and if we’re being realistic there’s no immediate relief in sight, and they still have a hundred and twenty-five more times to do this. How can they stop themselves from just giving up? I don’t envy McLaren right now, that’s for sure.

At this point, it’s hard to muster up optimism for this season, and that’s not good. Something big has to change here but I don’t know what it’s going to be. It’s already tough to be a Mariners fan; this spring is making it a lot tougher.